It was bow against claymore. Again and again the wild Highlanders, stripped to their shirts after their fashion, ‘like wave with crest of sparkling foam,’ hurled themselves with fiery impulse upon Stanley’s division—in vain. Their desperate courage availed nothing against the deadly arrow flight of the best archers of England and, after both their earls had fallen, they broke and fled westward over the space on which the Scottish centre had stood, leaving the hillside heaped with slain.
Somewhere about the same time, as it would seem, the Admiral had succeeded in breaking the division of Crawford and Montrose; the earls had fallen, and their followers were streaming away to the rear, and becoming intermingled with the fleeing Highlanders. The sight of the crowd of fugitives cannot but have had a fatal effect upon such troops as Home and Huntly had succeeded in keeping together. Howard turned the bulk of his victorious division against the uncovered left of the Scots’ centre, while Stanley wheeled round upon its right and rear.
BROWN BILL FROM NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE AND A BILL OF THE TIME OF HENRY VIII.
(From the Museum of Artillery, Woolwich.)
These movements decided the battle. The Scottish centre and Bothwell’s division were probably equal in number to the troops that assailed them; but they were practically surrounded, destitute of artillery, and with few arquebusiers and archers to respond to the steady fire from the English guns, matchlocks, and bows, while the unwieldy dimensions and density of their defensive formation made manœuvring impossible. Possibly the mass made endeavours to move to its left, but for all practical purposes it was stationary, and nothing was left to the gallant spearmen but to fight to the last. King James was in the front rank, and so long as he lived he never ceased to lead desperate attempts to break the English line. If he was no general, at least he wielded his ‘vain knight-errant’s brand’ as became a king. Wounded again and again, he was slain at last, within a few yards of where his aged opponent sat in his chariot[I] directing the battle. Still his followers fought on desperately. Scott has told the story of their great stand in glowing verse. The last stages of the battle must have taken place in ever-growing gloom, and when there was no longer light to direct the charges Surrey drew off his troops. Under cover of night the Scottish centre, shattered and broken, but unconquered still, struggled away to Coldstream and so across Tweed, to tell Scotland the story of disaster.
[I] Pitscottie calls him ‘an old crooked carle lying in a chariot.’
KING JAMES IV. (1488–1513).